"I don't think Federer, Nadal or Djokovic ever thought they'd lose to me" as Nick Kyrgios admits to unprofessional approach to tennis

Nick Kyrgios had a conversation with Naomi Osaka and reminisced about his victories over Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic. The 2022 Wimbledon finalist spoke with the Japanese player on the podcast “Good Trouble with Nick Kyrgios” and expressed his belief that his victories probably surprised the Big-3 more than other defeats.

The Aussie tennis player holds a 2-1 lifetime record against Novak Djokovic, a 3-6 record against Rafael Nadal, and a 1-6 record against Roger Federer. He is one of two players, along with Lleyton Hewitt, to win his first career meeting with Nadal (2014 Wimbledon), Federer (2015 Madrid), and Djokovic (2017 Acapulco).

Kyrgios is not the only player to have defeated members of the Big-3, as several other active tennis players have also achieved this feat, including Andy Murray, Stan Wawrinka, Dominic Thiem, Andrey Rublev, Alexander Zverev, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Grigor Dimitrov, Kei Nishikori, and Marin Cilic. According to Kyrgios, his victories were probably even more surprising for the Big-3.

"I don't think Federer, Nadal or Djokovic ever thought they'd lose to me. I think they look back and they're like, "How the hell did we manage to lose to him?"," Kyrgios told Osaka.

"So how was that like and were you able to digest that that happened?" Osaka asked the Australian.

"I guess I think about how unprofessional I was at that time. I didn't give my full self to the game. I wasn't training all the time and it just happened really early in my career," Kyrgios answered.

The 28-year-old athlete also recalled the surprising victory he had against Rafael Nadal at the 2014 Wimbledon, which propelled him to the forefront of the tennis world and gave him great confidence: "Beating Rafa, I was ranked like 150 in the world and he was World No. 1 I think at Wimbledon. And then, it gave this belief that you could do it, like, you could just get there and rattle the scene a little bit and beat the best in the world," Kyrgios said.